EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS
July 2025
Roger Williams Park Gateway Center
1197 Broad Street
Open daily 10 AM -5 PM
Free and open to the public
Wheelchair, handicap accessible
The Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Project, Inc., and SPIA Media Productions, Inc. present Blue Collar Rhody, a photography exhibition and interactive experience about the golden years of Local 1329 of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the first predominantly Cape Verdean union on the eastern seaboard, founded in 1933 by ‘Chief’ Manuel Q. Ledo and John F. Lopez.
This exhibition is a tribute to, from, and about the first Cape Verdean community of voluntary, non-English-speaking immigrants in Rhode Island. Arriving on Cape Verdean owned packet boats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they settled ‘down the Point,’ creating a community that extended contiguously from Planet and South Main Streets to the water at Tockwotton Street in India Point.
The waterfront was a way of life for three generations of Cape Verdean men who worked the boats arriving in the Port of Providence, Quonset, and Davisville, loading and unloading loose lumber, scrap iron, and other cargo. The longshoremen were proud “Masters of the Craft,” with skills passed down, father to son, from one generation to the next. It was a mark of distinction and pride to rise through the ranks and become a walking foreman, a “Master of the Craft.”
‘We stand on their shoulders,’ the theme of the installation, captures the resilience, strength, solidarity, and cultural pride of the Cape Verdeans and Local 1329, which was the economic lifeline and ‘table that fed the community,’ providing well-paying jobs, health and death benefits to the longshoremen, and stability for Local 1329 members and their families.
The exhibition showcases the Gallery of Memory, documentary portraits taken by awardwinning filmmaker and photographer Liane Brandon in 2009 at the Cape Verdean Progressive Center in East Providence, Rhode Island, where director Andrade-Watkins and her team, including Academy Award-winning Director of Photography Boyd Estus, were recording the interviews for Working the Boats: Masters of the Craft.
Working the Boats: Masters of the Craft, a six-part webisode series, premiered June 18-19, 2016, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in Our Rhode: 30 Years of Cinema By and About Cape Verdean Rhode Islanders, a retrospective of films created between 1986 and 2016 by filmmaker/director Claire Andrade-Watkins.
The Thursday, July 17th Gallery Night at the Roger Williams Park Gateway Center, 1197 Broad Street, Providence, RI features a talkback with curator and filmmaker Claire Andrade-Watkins, LitArts RI Executive Director Christina Bevilacqua, and renowned, Pell Award-winning artist Bob Dilworth.
Fox Point native Claire Andrade-Watkins is the recipient of a 2025 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) General Operating Support for Artists grant, President of SPIA Media Productions, Inc., and director of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Project (TFPCVHP), Inc., a community-based research initiative created in 2007 and incorporated in 2013.
Blue Collar Rhody Team & Thanks >
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Artist Statement >
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